No matter what level of “success” an artist is at, if he or she has invested time into refining and defining who they are and how they want to present their art to the world, that gets my attention. I discover just as many independent artists today as I do artists who have had extra help getting to where they are. What keeps my attention is, first and foremost, music that grabs my ear, but then the quality of the whole effort, which for me includes an artist website, not just a MySpace page, and the extent to which they have their ducks in a row, which now must start with an electronic press kit with high-res photos! I can’t tell you how many times I was able to run something in my magazine on an artist at the last minute, but a search online for a quality photo was not to be found and so they lost the opportunity.
- Erik Philbrook
